


La Gioconda

by hmweasley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Metamorphmagus, Mirror of Erised, Religion, Roman Catholicism, Snakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 10:02:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14446890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hmweasley/pseuds/hmweasley
Summary: A series of drabbles about Tonks and based on a set of prompts that were, in turn, based on the Mona Lisa.





	1. Divine

**Author's Note:**

> This first one was written with the prompt "divine."

Tonks entire experience with religion had come from her grandparents. Her mum had always been confused about the concept of God, and her dad had become an avowed atheist at some point in his childhood. But her grandparents hadn’t allowed their son being a wizard let their faith waver.

As a child, Tonks had loved visiting her grandparents’ house. It had been somewhat exotic. She loved going grocery shopping with her grandmother and watching the Muggles around them pile their card full of items that Tonks couldn’t identify at times.

But, if the grocery store was an exotic experience, going to church was something else entirely. 

Perhaps it was her parents’ scepticism, but Tonks had never bought into all the beliefs of Catholicism that her grandparents strongly believed in. Despite that, she enjoyed going to mass. She’d watch with wide eyes while the priest prayed over the bread and wine.

She could understand how her grandparents believed the bread and wine became the body and blood of Jesus when they’d seen their son do magic of his own.

It was only when she’d gotten to Hogwarts that Tonks had realized plenty of witches and wizards believed in God just as strongly as her grandparents.


	2. Mirror of Erised

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Mirror of Erised

Tonks never got to see the Mirror of Erised. It had been destroyed before she ever learned that it had existed at all.

It had been Ginny who first shared her knowledge of it with Tonks, though she too had only heard of its existence. She was fascinated by it, and Tonks couldn’t blame her because she was too.

Though they both understood the warnings that men had wasted away in front of it, it was difficult not to wonder what one would have seen if they’d looked into the Mirror. Tonks wasn’t sure for herself. Not anymore.

If she’d looked in the Mirror before becoming an Auror, she thought she’d have seen herself as an Auror, but she’d achieved that dream. 

With all of the pain and chaos around them, she would have liked to believe that her ultimate dream was to see an end to the war. How wonderful it would have felt if her ultimate wish had really been world peace. So many claimed theirs was, but few were telling the truth.

Tonks certainly wasn’t because, while she longed for an end to the fighting, that wasn’t what her heart truly desired above everything else.

She’d spent nearly an hour talking with Ginny, trying to figure out what both of them would see, but it wasn’t until that night that she let herself acknowledge her true answer.

If she looked into that Mirror, she would have seen the end of the war, but not for peace’s sake. The end of the war, she was convinced, would mean that things were better for everyone, but they would especially be better for Remus. There would be less stigma, and then, perhaps, he would finally get over his ridiculous beliefs that she was delusion and didn’t really want to be with him.

Maybe.


	3. Most Confident Person

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "[he/she/character name] would make even the most confident person despair and lose heart." — Giorgio Vasari, about the Mona Lisa. In your drabble, it can be about anything or anyone else.
> 
> (In this, it's about Remus.)

Tonks had never had a hard time in dating. That wasn’t because she was so gorgeous that people flocked to her. There had been the occasional jerk who dated her only for the thrill of her metamorphmagus abilities, but she’d gotten rid of them quickly enough.

She was ashamed to admit that there had been a few times, when she was particularly young, where she had changed her appearance specifically to impress someone she had a crush on, but even after those years, she’d found that she had enough confidence to make up for whatever she looked like.

It had always been that way. Tonks felt enthusiastic about life, and she’d found that others tended to find it infectious. That wasn’t to say that people were lining up to date her, just that she never let it get to her when they weren’t interested. That was their problem not hers.

Remus Lupin was the first time Tonks felt her confidence waver.

For the first time, she found herself feeling despair over the rejection. She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t get over it. There was something about him that had her enthralled in a way no one else had before, but it was made worse by his reasons for rejecting her.

He felt as much for her as she felt for him. She knew he did as he’d admitted as much when he’d rejected her. The rejection had come entirely from a sense of his own inadequacy, and as someone who had carefully built up her own confidence for years, Tonks was struggling with the fact that someone else’s lack of it had finally done her in.

She watched herself in the mirror, tugging on strands of her mousy brown hair. It was the first time she’d seen her real hair colour in years.

She didn’t like it.


	4. Tonks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Nymphadora Tonks

Tonks took the utmost pride in being a metamorphmagus. Even as a child, she would happily brag to any who would listen about it, flickering through different looks at such speeds that no one could keep up at her. Most of her humour back then had centered around her abilities.

Then, in her fourth year of Hogwarts, she’d begun questioning who she was. She supposed that all teenagers were destined to wonder the same thing, but her own worries centered heavily around being a metamorphmagus.

What was she supposed to believe about herself when she could look any way she wanted in a split second?

Others certainly seemed to have been wondering it before she was. There were pointed questions about what her “real” appearance was, as if they didn’t quite trust her. When the drama that only teenagers can create had started, there had been accusations of decievement because no one could be quite sure if Tonks was telling them the truth.

It had weighed heavier and heavier on her until Tonks had begun to wish that she’d never been born a metamorphmagus at all.

She’d stopped changing her appearance, though it hadn’t convinced everyone that her appearance was her “real” one. She’d bought makeup with her friends though she could have achieved the same effect entirely on her own. Her friends trusted it more if it was applied with her hands instead of with her magic.

Her fifth year was when things had begun to turn around.

Professor Sprout saw every Hufflepuff in their year to counsel them on future careers. Tonks had come to her own meeting with few ideas. She was only fifteen. How was she supposed to know what she wanted to do with her life?

Sprout had been the first to mention being an Auror, pointing out that Tonks abilities as a metamorphmagus would be a huge asset to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

Tonks had never considered it before, but she’d left Sprout’s office that day feeling like herself for the first time in a year.


	5. Green

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: green

Tonks loathed the colour green, and she blamed her mother for it.

At Hogwarts, Andromeda had been a Slytherin, forced to wear green nearly every day for seven years. When Tonks had been a child, Andromeda had insisted that this was what had made her loath the colour. It hadn’t been until Tonks had gotten older that she’d started to suspect that, perhaps, her mother’s aversion had a different source.

Either way, though, Andromeda’s distaste for the colour had been spread to her daughter, and Tonks tried to avoid green when she could.

By the time she was a full-fledged Auror, Tonks had pretty much settled on her signature pink hair, but before that, she had cycled through the rainbow on a daily basis, experimenting with every shade imaginable. Every shade, that was, except all of the greens.

She made some exceptions for shades that were a little green but mostly yellow or blue. Nothing too green though, or she felt a little revolted.

Her friends had never quite believed that her aversion had nothing to do with Slytherin, but that really had been the furthest thing from her mind.

For better or worse, she just couldn’t bring herself to like the colour green.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: small snake

The snake appeared surprisingly oblivious to the young girl creeping at it from the top of it’s small enclosure.

Tonks leant up on her toes to get a better look at it. She’d had the pet snake for a week, but after nearly two years of begging, she hadn’t lost interest in it like her mother had accused her of before they’d even bought it.

When she’d first started asking for a snake at the age of six, her father had begun making jokes about about his and Andromeda’s daughter being as much of a Slytherin as her mother. Tonks had no idea if that were true; she had only the vaguest sense of what the differences were between the four Hogwarts’ houses. All she knew was that she was enthralled by the creature that she’d finally been allowed to bring home.

The creature still didn’t have a name. She was determined that it have a perfect one, but a week in, she hadn’t yet decided what the perfect name was. She’d repeatedly wrinkled her nose at her father’s suggestions of Salazar, Slither, or (worst of all) Hiss. 

She wasn’t allowed to hold the snake without permission, and that was the only thing keeping her from sticking her hand into the enclosure. Andromeda had been clear that any violations of that particular rule meant they were getting rid of the snake immediately, and Tonks never would have risked that.

Still, her fingers flexed from the urge of touching it again, feeling the way its scales felt against her fingertips. She loved it. She still couldn’t believe it was actually hers.


End file.
